Smirisary

There is such power in this place. I had all but forgotten. Whenever I am here, I understand what people mean when they talk about 'the old places of the earth.' It isn't so much defined by absolute age in years or era, it's the knowledge of being in the presence of a power very much other than the ones that govern our everyday lives and set the rules we play by at work, at home, at school: there are times when I feel as if nature is becoming one of these powers, a force we can all but avoid in our normal existence; a beast we have found a way to trammel in and hem about, except for those rare occasions it escapes and wrecks havoc, and we are left picking up the pieces when we should have been better prepared. Here, though, on the edge of reality, nature is very much alive, very much free, and it is fey. It is extraordinary.

I'm a little ahead of myself. The Gortien can do that.

We are on holiday, my family and I, in a little crofting cottage on the west coast of Scotland, about an hour's drive to the coast from Fort William, by the town of Glenuig [for those of you who know your local geography!]. The Gortien is one cottage in what used to be a subsistence farming community called Smirisary - that is, a scattered collection of tiny homesteads that grew enough food to survive and perhaps trade for tools and other supplies, and nothing extra - an isolated existence virtually without money or governance, until the great and savage Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries wiped out and relocated vast swathes of the indigenous Scottish population. Since then the vast majority of such communities have remained abandoned, but Smirisary gained some minor recognition in the '50s when one woman in particular braved the harsh living conditions to document her attempts at an alternative, subsistence lifestyle. Since then, many of the old cottages in the area have been renovated to varying degrees as holiday cottages or private getaways.

The Gortien, my family's particular haunt, sits nestled in a fold in the hills just under ten minutes walk from the rocky coastline. It remains essentially the same building as when it was an isolated homestead a hundred years ago: a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen build out of rough, now white-washed stone and fronted by a simple wooden conservatory erected several years back. There is a tank on the hill collecting rainwater and an enormous Rayburn stove in the kitchen to complement the fireplace in the bedroom for providing central heating, but there is no electricity, no gas or phone lines, no drinkable water - everything you need must be carried the half-mile or so from the nearest road - litres of water, kilograms of coal and bottles of propane, all your food supplies and [of course!] piles of reading material. It is almost barbaric in its simplicity - it is bliss.

I honestly can't describe the experience properly: a failure of vocabulary. Tramping over the hills and through the ferns laden with stuffed backpacks and arms full; sitting out on top of the hill watching the sun set over the sea and ignite the Scottish islands perched on the edge of the horizon; reading by a hot, roaring peat fire smelling of bog and freshly-turned earth, safe in four solid walls of stone as the storms come raging in and as quickly are swept out again; playing cards on the old, scarred kitchen table while my father hums busily at the gigantic coal-fired oven, creating stew or baking bread; chasing sheep off the porch with a clattering of hooves and a chorus of indignant bleating ... so many utterly unique experiences rolled into one unassuming cottage by the sea.

This place brings the world back to life, for me. I could spend an age ranting about the depravities of my concrete mecca of a city, but sat here listening to the short-wave radio murmuring about the weather and the shipping forecast, writing the letters I can't write in the midst of the rattle and hum of reality, writing by candle-light and oil lamp and saying things that matter to the people whom I love and cherish - sitting here watching the red fade to blue to grey to black, I cannot care too much about the place I've come from. That I'll be going back there in a few too-short days is the least meaningful fact I am aware of at this moment: how is it meant to compare to the vital, immediate fact that there is a herd of wild highland cattle and one of deer that will come right up to the house to nibble the long weeds around the window, or the unbelievable truth of precisely how many different shades of blue and white can be seen in one split-second curve of a breaker before it crashes to the shore, or the way that even now the flickering lamp light makes strange, surreal hieroglyphs out of my writing, slanting upward away from the dancing glow of flame on steel nib, up the page and into the gloom. These are facts, essential and incontrovertible, they are everything that defines this moment. On Thursday I will be back at work, listening to the slack-jawed nonentities mumbling damp, meaningless sentences, and while my head nods and my voice makes empty noises of approval, my heart will say, "there is a place - you know it, because you have been there - where your hands and your voice, your eyes and your mind and every other fibre of your being act in concert, and what they do has a meaning that will no wash away in an instant, one that sits untouchable above the floods that wash away the revolting, soulless gestures of these cardboard people and stands exulting in the tumult and storm that rages around their clapboard lives, pulling them to pieces. It is a place of high walls, of deep harbours, of firm foundations in the midst of hurricane and warmth in the midst of gale and rain. It is a knowledge of real beauty, and real fury, and real danger such as we have almost forgotten, a knowledge that sees our pale imitations of these things standing naked before it and accepts that they are not worth the effort of contempt. Out here, beyond the electrical hum pervading our lives, beyond the simpering moral and intellectual rot gnawing at the root of our existence, beyond frightened people locked inside their own skins [and believe me, I know all about that], there is a moment upon cresting the hill and seeing the sun breaking up the rain clouds like fingers of fire shining on the sea, a moment as if coming suddenly to the edge of a thick bank of fog and pulling free of formless grey to see the entire wealth of creation spread out before you. There is that one moment with the sea air in your face like the very breath of God saying, 'here - now - you must understand that you are more real than that which you will return to - never be afraid of what you shall pass through like the fog.'

Well. Too deep for a little stone cottage on the Scottish coast? Then you've never been there. All I can say is that it doesn't matter what god, if any, you believe in, or what version of reality you subscribe to: there is power in this place, out sojourning amidst the very edges of the world. I could write another gospel without ever beginning to crack the secrets of what this place does, and I think that is how it was meant to be: this wild world sends you back a little cleansed, and a little less respectful of the snivelling demons waiting for your return. Come and try it out yourself sometime, would be my only advice: experience what it feels like, even for a second, to approach this mess of a world with the spark of the divine written in thunder and air across your face. I recommend it.